The Battlestar Galactist Generation

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

We're in chambers this week, clearing the docket.

With me, as always,

the man, the myth, the legend, Judge John Hodgman.

Now, Jesse Thorne, by the time this comes out, I will not even be in the continental United States.

I will be floating at sea down the Mexican Riviera with Jonathan Colton on his cruise.

So that's still a couple of weeks away.

So as we speak now, I am in my chambers here in Brooklyn, New York, but specifically I'm in my medicinal full-body immersion bath of sunscreen to prepare for this trip.

It's a treatment.

It's sort of like tooth whitening, but it's a deep skin protective treatment.

And I have to sit in this tub of Factor 9000 sunblock to let it seep in.

Is it like like a tray with teeth whitening?

Is it Judge Hodgman shaped?

I had an option.

I had an option to get one that was more like a suit, a suit full of goo that I could wear so I could do my errands here in Brooklyn and whatnot and move around

more like slosh around in it.

But it was a little more expensive and I don't want to go outside.

I'm looking for opportunities to sit in a vat for five hours a day anyway.

So I took this one.

You're always keen on a vat opportunity.

That's exactly so.

So if you hear me clicking my mouse or typing on my keyboard during this recording, that is not me.

That is a sound effect.

Because of course, my arms and hands are deep in a vat of sunblock.

I also love to sit in a vat, but I don't have to look for opportunities because I'm one of those super Cylons.

Oh,

deep BSG cut.

Yeah.

Except for that I couldn't remember what they were called, so I just said super Cylons.

I think all of the humanoid Cylons would emerge from a vat of goo in the new BSG.

Did they all go back to the goovat?

One of them was just in a vat all the time, right?

Yeah, I think they were constantly growing artificial bodies and goovats.

And then if their existing body was murdered or destroyed in some way, their consciousness would thumb drive back to the mothership and go into a new vat body.

Right.

That's technology.

That's how that works.

Well, it's going to be our future.

We want to settle some cases?

Well, look, I don't want to talk about Cylons more.

You see, the thing about Cylons

was that they were incapable of,

they were a monotheistic society that had an almost evangelical belief in God, whereas the colonists were all pretty secular, polytheist.

But the reason they were preoccupied with God, these Cylons, is because they had no sense of mortality, because they were born immortal.

And that's what, when we as a species defeat mortality, which

Ray Kurzweil says is going to happen, pretty soon we're going to be thumb-driving our consciousness back to some vat body somewhere.

That's going to really play a real mind game with us as we adapt to this new idea that we aren't going to die.

You know, so I feel a lot of sympathy for the Cylons.

Anyway, this new podcast is called the Battlestar Galacticaist Generation, and it's going to be very successful.

I guess that would be Battlestar Galactist.

You know what?

I'll workshop it for a while while you read the letter.

Okay, great.

This is from Emily.

I live in New York City, and I take the subway every day to get to work.

Yesterday, somebody pushed past me on an escalator in a way that made me feel like I was going to fall down the stairs.

Awkwardly, I then ran into this person while I was on the G-train.

I wasn't surprised that he was lounging on the pole, blocking the doors with his reclined body.

You can imagine my shock to see what he was reading.

Vacation Land by John Hodgman.

Whoa, what?

I spent the whole ride watching him not move out of the way, too absorbed in his book to give commuters sufficient space to get on and off the train.

I mulled over whether I should confront him, but I didn't have the emotional energy for conflict.

Also, I was carrying groceries.

Would you please rule that Judge John Hodgman fans are required to act respectfully in public life while advertising their associations with you?

Oh, this is a grave, grave disappointment in one of my readers.

You know, the experience of putting vacation land out into the world

was almost uniformly, I would just say, uniformly positive until this moment, primarily because of all the nice people taking pictures of the book as they were reading it and putting it onto social medias and making me feel good at two o'clock in the morning when I wake up for no reason and stay awake for four hours and wonder what I'm going to do with the rest of my life.

So that's, I'm so grateful to all of them, but not you, guy,

reading my book on the subway because the subway is a part of my life and people who block those entrances are beneath contempt.

Now here's the thing.

Normally this podcast is pretty strict about hearing disputes between two parties.

I don't like disputes with strangers that you saw one time.

And I don't like disputes with yourself because that's too philosophical.

I like person A versus person B.

But I realized two things as I was absorbing the shock of this bad behavior by this dude.

who with my book

because one the first thing is one he was reading my book and therefore it is possible that he is a listener to this podcast.

It is possible that this person may be listening right now.

And two,

subsequently, I realized, I therefore have the power to shame this person in his very ears.

So listen.

Listen, dude, listening to my voice.

First of all, thank you for buying my book.

I appreciate that.

Thank you for reading it on the subway and showing it off so people could know.

But I need you to be a good representative

of my book because if you're about to knock people down on the escalator and then you man spread all over the pole lounging on the pole and don't let people on or off the train and you've got my book that doesn't just make you look bad that makes me look bad people are going to be like i don't want to read the book that a creep reads

so for the good of humanity And also for the better of me,

I'm starting a new segment from time to time on this docket.

A new segment of public shaming, some vigilante justice.

And this is it, dude.

You're in the stocks.

I order you.

You're in the internet stocks until I release you, until you behave better on the subway.

You are hearing me right now, and I hope the sweat is pouring down your face.

And maybe you are urinating in your pants because you can't believe this is happening to you.

That's how you should feel.

Feel bad.

Feel bad until you correct your behavior.

This is the sound of a gavel.

You're in the stocks, dude.

Wow, that was about as real as this show's ever gotten.

That was raw.

Well, you know what happens is

when there is no one to speak back to me and I can preach from a position of power into a dude's ears, I become a terrible monster.

Speaking of preaching from a position of power into people's ears, can I clarify something I said?

I believe it was on a recent docket episode of Judge John Hodgman.

I will allow it.

I've had a lot of questions via email and Twitter regarding undershirts.

Oh, right.

I fear that I may have been unclear because of the nature of the questions.

So I want to clarify my position on undershirts.

First of all, it is perfectly appropriate to wear an undershirt.

It's a personal choice.

Some people feel clammy when they wear an undershirt.

Some people feel more comfortable when they wear an undershirt.

Whatever you prefer is fine.

However, what I would ask that you not do

is wear a crew neck undershirt under a buttoned shirt that has the neck open

unless you are going for a specific layered effect.

And be realistic.

You know if you're trying to layer and you know if you're just showing your underwear.

Or you're going for

a look I I call third season friends chandler.

Yeah, I mean, I would say the ideal version of that would be J.

Crew catalog model.

I think a J.

Crew catalog model will, you know, they'll often style it layered and, you know, it'll be a colored shirt that complements other parts of the outfit.

And the shirt on top of it might be unbuttoned a little lower.

And that's perfectly fine.

But if you're wearing a plain white undershirt as an undershirt and you have another shirt on top of it, it should either be a V-neck undershirt or you should have all of the buttons on your shirt buttoned up.

You should button it up all the way to the neck so that we're not looking at your underwear.

That's all.

I just wanted to clarify that point because I got a lot of questions about it.

I would like to follow up not on the topic of undershirts, but on the topic of underwears,

because I have been receiving a lot of comments and suggestions on email and social media regarding my dilemma of that I can't get my American apparel underwear anymore.

And I just want to say thank you to everyone who took the time to think about my underwear over the past several weeks.

Very flattering.

I had some great suggestions.

Our friend Ennis Esmer, now series regular on Blind Spot on NBC.

Wow, they didn't just get him on there a couple episodes and kill him off, huh?

No.

Hmm.

Because they've had some really good guest actors on that show who just came on and then got killed off, as it turned out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I can think of one prime example of someone they had on a couple of times.

This character and this actor made a big splash.

The actor was very excited to go back on the show, but then they killed him off right away.

I can think of some other really talented actors who were on the show that were not killed off, like Paul F.

Tompkins and Mark McConville and Matt Gorley, the latter two of whom are former editors of this show.

Yeah.

At this point, it's starting to feel bad that I haven't been on this show.

It should mount a campaign.

I'm available.

You could go on as my brother.

My character's evil brother.

But only one, Ennis Esmer, was on the show a couple of times.

And because Ennis is so gosh darn charming and winning, they made him a series regular, so check him out.

I do adore him.

And he suggested Calvin Klein.

It's hard for me to wear Calvin Klein because of the associations with Mark Wahlberg still.

You're really hanging on to those.

A lot of people, look, that's all I got.

I'm an old man.

A lot of people suggested various podcast brands of underwear.

I'm not going to name them because I don't know if we're making money from them or I'll say the wrong one.

They're two big podcast underwears and they fight each other.

And I don't want to say the wrong one, but you know who I'm talking about.

So I want to let you guys know, I appreciate all your advice.

I think I found something that just might work, and it arrived yesterday in the mails.

I have not yet put the garment on my body, and I hope that next time we record, I'll have good news for you.

What a thrilling cliffhanger.

Well, that's what we call in the podcast business, an underwear tease.

Here's something from Sam.

I'm currently sitting in a coffee shop and overhearing a conversation between a male college student and his girlfriend.

He's talking about how he cheats in all of his classes.

Some forms of his cheating include sharing answers with friends, copying answers from an online textbook, and putting it in a Word document to use during quizzes.

He calls it beating the system

and not cheating.

As a teacher at a large university, this absolutely infuriates me.

It sounds to me like his approach to life is going to turn him into the kind of person I don't think is a great addition to society.

Also, beating the system hurts your peers who are doing honest work too.

What do I do?

Do I ignore it and jam my earbuds further into my ears?

Do I confront him with my words and really tell him what's up?

Do I punch him in the face?

What?

No.

Or do I go home and prepare the best lecture ever and make up for this guy?

P.S.

Now he's talking about how he wants to buy a Ferrari F-12.

Also, just heard his name is Alex.

Alex, perfect.

I have information for my shaming.

Sam, Sam, you don't need to do anything, because here come the stocks.

And written on the stocks is the name Alex, because they're going to go around the ankles of this jerk.

You know, my wife teaches public high school here in New York City, and this conversation has been going on for a long time.

She's worked there more than, it's measured in decades.

And when she first started, she was abashed by the conversation around cheating in the school, which was these Smarty Pants kids at this Smarty Pants public school thought that cheating was totally reasonable.

It was beating the system.

You know, you could use any method at your disposal, every tool at hand, to get the grade that you needed to get to get to go to that college.

And she and I, and others that we told, despaired over this attitude

because it was surprising to us that kids,

teenagers, who should be idealistic, were instead already.

I'm just trying to figure out a way to say this word in a family-friendly podcast.

Let's just say underwear covers the part of the body that they were being.

Normally, people do not become so cynical.

until a later age.

And there were disputes and debates that we would have, she and I and our friend group, over this issue of cheating.

If you're cheating, are you just cheating yourself?

I think, absolutely.

You are not getting the full depth of knowledge.

You are not pushing your brain through the discomfort that it takes to really master the knowledge that you're being asked to reproduce.

And are you cheating others?

That's what Sam is worried about, that somehow...

This guy cheating is going to hurt other people in his class who aren't cheating.

That one, unless I'm sure I'm going to get letters in social medias about this, but unless there's some grading algorithm that this Ferrari dude, Alex, is throwing off by cheating in this way and by encouraging others to cheat, I don't know about it.

The truth of the matter is, when you're confronted in life with people doing the wrong thing,

if they are hurting others, it is incumbent upon you to stop it, to speak up.

It is hard to do.

It is not always easy to do.

And it is okay if you don't don't do it every time.

Gosh knows I've not made every confrontation I could have made in life.

But when someone is expressing their own inner rot,

their own self-cannibalizing, soulless, cynical worldview, and even if they're bragging about it,

you do not have to punch them in their face.

In fact, Sam, I urge you not to do that because you will go to jail, not Ferrari Alex, the jerk.

But instead, take confidence that their beating the system will eventually beat them down in ways that may not be measured in their success.

They might be very successful, may not be measured in their pocketbook.

They may be very financially successful as well.

Who knows?

But they're consuming themselves when they do this.

And you just go home and you prepare the best lecture ever, not to make up for this guy, although that's a grand sentiment, but because you're Sam

and he's Alex, and we know where you are, Sam, you're at the top, top of the heap, number one good person.

And you know where Alex is?

In the stocks, dude.

This is the Sam with the stocks closing.

Wow.

Yeah, you know what you're in, Alex?

The Ferrari of stocks.

I really splurged on these.

You know, Judge Hodgman, I cheated in college.

Yeah, how do you feel about it?

I'm okay with it.

I did not cheat.

Here's the thing.

I was a poor student starting in around middle school

all the way until college

and was not a great student in college.

But I went to a University of California school and there were certain graduation requirements.

I had to take a Gen Ed science class.

And I signed up for a genetics class, remembering a segment on genetics that I had done in a math class in middle school or high school that I had enjoyed.

We had a nice teacher.

It was a huge lecture hall class.

And we sat down in there and about class three,

I realized that I had not taken high school chemistry or biology

and had no idea what was going on in the class.

And I knew that if I didn't pass the class, I would not be allowed to graduate from college.

And I knew that I would never be called upon in my life to do genetics.

And so, what I did is, I had two good friends in the class, both of whom were nerdier than I,

and I said, Hey, Dan and Nathaniel, I don't have any idea what's going on.

And they said, just copy our answers.

And I said,

Yeah, okay, I'll just copy your answers.

And I did fine and passed.

And I graduated from college.

Sometimes an act of moral failure serves a greater good.

Thank you.

You needed to graduate from college.

I did.

I'm not letting you off the hook just because you're my friend and you're adorable.

Oh.

But because you have a conscience.

You are doing what you needed to do to survive.

It was a dog eat dog world.

That's right.

If you were starving on the street,

I was going to say, and you had to steal an apple to survive, but since you said dog eat dog, if you were starving on the street and you had to eat a dog,

well, I don't think you'd be able to do it.

It would be hard.

Also, don't know if it's illegal.

I love it.

But stealing an apple, weirdly, definitely we know that's illegal.

Eating a stray dog, unclear.

But that's a problem with our United States system.

Yeah, that's one of the many problems with our criminal justice system.

Yeah, but you know what you weren't ever doing, Jesse Thorne?

You weren't going around to the coffee shop going, hey, guess what, everybody?

I beat the system.

I'm stealing from these two nerds in the class.

And that's the way to do it, because that's how the world is.

There was the bragging on it that was the greater moral crime.

And if you think that's how the world is, you're going to find yourself in a world that is like that.

And there are sections of the world where people are monstrous to each other, where they lie and routinely, and they treat each other as subhumans that they only have to get over in order to get more and more money.

And that is a world that must be fought.

Anyway, Alex and the Ferrari, good luck driving that Ferrari with your feet in those stocks.

I feel of all confidence shaming this guy because he doesn't feel shame.

And Jesse Thorne, I absolve you.

Okay, let's take a break and hear about some of the other awesome shows that MaximumFund.org makes.

We'll be back in just a second on Judge John Hodgman.

I love other shows.

Let's hear it.

Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman.

The Judge John Hodgman podcast is brought to you every week by you, our members, of course.

Thank you so much for your support of this podcast and all of your favorite podcasts at maximumfund.org, and they are all your favorites.

If you want to join the many member supporters of this podcast and this network, boy, oh boy, that would be fantastic.

Just go to maximumfund.org/slash join.

The Judge John Hodgman podcast is also brought to you this week by Made In.

Let me ask you a question.

Did you know that most of the dishes served at Tom Clicchio's craft restaurant are made in, made in pots and pans?

It's true.

The Brace Short Ribs, Made In, Made In.

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That heritage pork chop that you love so much, you got it.

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But Made In isn't just for professional chefs.

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And even some of your favorite celebratory dishes can be amplified with Made In cookware.

It's the stuff that professional chefs use, but because it is sold directly to you, it's a lot more affordable than some of the other high-end brands.

We're both big fans of the carbon steel.

I have a little

carbon steel skillet that my mother-in-law loves to use because cast iron is too heavy for her uh but she wants that non-stick and i know that she can you know she can heat that thing up hot if she wants to use it hot uh she can use it to braise if she wants to use it to braise um

it's an immensely useful piece of kitchen toolery and and it will last a long time and and whether it's uh griddles or pots and pans or knives or glassware or tableware.

I mean, you know, Jesse, I'm sad to be leaving Maine soon, but I am very, very happy to be getting back to my beloved made-in entree bowls.

All of it is incredibly solid, beautiful, functional, and as you point out, a lot more affordable because they sell it directly to you.

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That's m-a-d-e-i-n cookware.com.

Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

This week, we're clearing the docket.

Jesse Thorne, first of all, I have two things I want to say.

Yeah.

First, I love the sound of that other show, and I'm going to listen to it.

I'm going to subscribe to it.

Great.

And when Max Fun Drive comes, I'm going to donate to it.

Second, I had an idea during the break

because just yelling stocks at a person who isn't there isn't exactly shame enough.

And we don't have, unfortunately, a sheriff on this show to enforce my orders.

We have no fake justice enforcement arm.

So I have always insisted that our listeners be self-policing, which is really the best way to be anyway.

But after this podcast, I'm going to go,

you know, I'm going to reach out to our friend Aaron Draplin in Portland, Oregon, and see if he will design a button.

a badge, a pin.

You know what I'm talking about?

A round thing you put in your jean jacket?

Yeah, a stickeroo.

Yeah.

What's is that what you call it I just did didn't I okay

I'm gonna ask him and I hope that he'll agree

to allow me to commission a Judge John Hodgman shame badge

it's gonna be a scarlet letter and they're gonna be available via our store and then if we ever have to shame someone in the future in this way

Or it might be a condition of a verdict against someone,

they're going to have to get that shame badge and wear it for a certain period of time on their jean jacket.

And then they'll always know.

That guy on the subway, he'll have to wear that on the subway.

And every Judge John Hodgman listener will know to look at him and shun him

or say, thanks for following the rules this time.

It's going to be great.

MaxFundStore.com, that's where all of our merchandise is.

Keep an eye out for that shame badge.

There'll be further announcements forthcoming.

I love it.

Here's something from Lindsay.

I have friends and family members who insist that a 15% tip at a sit-down restaurant is sufficient for good service.

Most recently, I noticed my new boyfriend does this too.

I'm more in the 20% camp, reserving a 15% tip for poor service.

He only recently moved to the U.S.

and thinks the American tipping system is stupid.

Uh-oh, red flag.

Starting to see red.

As far as I'm concerned, there's no greater personal sin than saying the tipping system is stupid.

Not because the tipping system isn't stupid.

I think there's an argument to be made that it's stupid.

I may even agree with that argument, but simply because it is always used as a justification for a monstrosity and not as a way to change the world for the better.

Anyway, okay, here's what else she says.

I agree that it is, but complaining won't change anything.

Here's me giving Lindsay a standing ovation.

Yes.

Many of my friends have worked as servers.

I know how much they depend on tips to live.

Under the current American system, isn't an 18 or 20% tip for good service service just the norm in sit-down restaurants?

I request you to order him to tip at least 15% for sub-average service, at least 18% for good service, and a full 20% if the server's gone out of his or her way to do something extra for us, like answering questions about the town if we're traveling.

Well, I think listeners know where I'm leaning on this because we already covered it.

back in Verdict 158, tipping the scales of justice.

That was about tipping room attendants in a hotel, the people who make up your bed and clean the sheets that you have sweated in all night long.

You should leave them $5 a night, period.

Because people who work in tipping industries work hard.

And your

creepo boyfriend from other lands may think that the tipping

system in American restaurants is stupid.

And as we've, I think, all agreed,

it is counterintuitive.

These people work hard.

They should be paid a living wage.

Tipping should not be factored into their wages.

Tipping is,

in restaurants, tends to favor the front of the house over the back of the house, and those people work hard too.

There are a lot of problems with the system.

Danny Meyer, the restaurateur, is working really hard to fix this and to create a new restaurant culture of fair wages, health insurance, and other compensations and career training where there is no tipping involved and the prices are higher.

And guess what?

People are, diners are having to adjust to this,

but at least he's doing something.

Being stingy is not an act

of moral bravery in the face of an unjust system.

Being stingy is directly hurting another human being,

denying them part of what is their baked in wages.

You may not like the system, but it is the system.

Okay, Creepo boyfriend?

Now,

I'm going to say right now, this will be controversial, but I'm sure that I will get social meets all the live-long day about this.

20%,

period.

That's where you start these days in restaurants, at least in big cities.

That may be different.

In other towns, the expectation may be a little bit less, never less than 15%.

But 15% was the standard that I was taught by my mom and dad when I was 10, you know, or 11 or 12, when I first be able to figure out percentages.

And that was was a thousand years ago.

Standard now is 20%.

If you have exemplary service, 25% or higher.

But I would never dip below 20%.

And that's not only because

occasionally, every now and then, someone still recognizes me, and I'm afraid they're going to put my thing on the internet and say, what a cheapskate John Hodgman is.

And the rest of the internet is going to go, who?

Because that apple money ran out.

But mostly because the people who are working, particularly the people who are working in restaurants,

they are working in restaurants for a number of reasons.

People who choose to work in restaurants do so to maintain the flexibility of their schedule, probably because they have children.

Probably because they are young and just starting out.

Probably because they are chasing some other dream.

They might be artists.

Probably because all kinds of reasons that this is not their career necessarily.

Not to put down people who are staff in restaurants as a career.

That's amazing too.

And I think Danny Meyer, it sounds like, is trying to make that a more realistic possibility for people.

But the people who are serving you in restaurants, for the most part, they're dreamers, just like you, dumb dumbs.

They listen to podcasts too.

And they're choosing that career because it offers them the flexibility to do other things like paint their paintings or raise their son or daughter.

So

I never feel bad when I accidentally find myself in a situation where, like in a hotel room, where I don't have have that $5 to put down, so I have to put down $20.

Because for a second, I'm like, yeah, that's a lot of money.

But another thing is like, I don't ever clean a toilet in my life.

So, yeah,

everyone feels good when you tip, and everyone feels better when you over-tip.

But the fact is, this is the system, dude.

You know what I think of when I'm tipping?

No, what?

This is what I think.

I think, look, I work very hard.

I work very long hours.

My job is very stressful.

It's stressful to be responsible for other people's livelihoods in addition to your own.

I'm not saying I'm a lazy bones.

No.

But I think almost every person who works in a service industry, who is working partly for tips, is working harder than I am.

At the very least, they're all on the top tier of hard work.

Sure.

None of them are paid a great hourly wage.

None of those jobs pay a great hourly wage.

Some of them, thankfully, in some places that have things like living wage ordinances, get paid

a livable wage, but nobody is getting rich doing work that receives tips, not even ministers who do weddings.

And

they deserve it at least as much or more than me.

That's at the end of the day.

Like, I think, like, I love having this $20,

but this person deserves it at least as much as me.

The least I can do is give it to them, given that they have worked hard to make my life better.

Yeah.

I also feel really strongly that you should tip particularly generously in

lower-priced restaurants.

I think that the folks who work very hard at the Mexican restaurant where I can take my whole family to dinner for $45

deserve the tip even more than the people at the lovely French restaurant that I go to once every few months on a date with my wife.

Right, because the system is stupid.

Tipping is better in restaurants that have higher priced menu items because

it's a calculation.

So absolutely, you're absolutely right.

And the thing is that whether you're working in a taco place, whether you're working in a high-end restaurant, fine dining, fast casual, whatever it is, and particularly if it is table service on the floor,

that is a job that you disrespect at your peril because it is incredibly taxing physically and incredibly taxing mentally.

And if you are bad to that person,

look, a professional would never spit in your food, but you might deserve it.

Occasional guest bail of Jean Gray,

whom I talk about on the show all the time, because she's brilliant and my friend.

But she created an instructional album for adults, she called it, called That's Not How You Do It.

It's a music and spoken word album that tells you how to be a proper grown-up, how to act on a plane, how to use your headphones on the bus.

And in particular, I think the number one with a bullet on this album is Don't, and I'm going to have to use a term for something that I didn't want to say before because it's a family podcast, but it is a piece of the body body that is covered by underwear.

Don't be a d to the wait staff.

And it's a great song.

You should go check her out at jeangray.bandcamp.com.

Gray, I spell G-R-A-E.

One other thing, final thing I will say about this:

if you are lucky enough to go to a restaurant where you know the owner, or you've made a relationship with the bartender, or you've been a regular there, and they want to do something nice for you, so they buy you dessert, or they buy you a drink or they comp your whole meal even.

Remember, that doesn't lower the amount of service that the servers had to offer you.

Tip on the amount that you would have paid, not the amount that you do pay.

If they knock off 50% off your bill for whatever reason, don't tip on the half price, tip on the full price, because the server worked the same amount.

no matter what.

Okay, that's all I have to say about it for now.

Here's something from Abby.

For the last 18 months, my husband Jack has been the primary driver of our shared car.

When I was the primary driver, I took exceptional care of it.

I didn't eat in the car very much and regularly took it to the car wash.

But Jack has yet to actually wash it.

There are stains on the seats from eating burritos on the go.

He thinks taking care of the visual aspect of the car is an unnecessary expense and will only maintain things like routine oil changes.

To add insult to injury, when I do wash the car and vacuum out the seats, Jack thinks we should split any money that I find because it's most likely from his pockets.

I'd like Judge Hodgman to rule the following.

Jack has to wash the car four times a year.

Whoever cleans the car gets to keep any and all money they find.

And burritos should not be consumed while driving.

Or you can rule what is and isn't allowed as acceptable food to eat in the car.

Thank you.

Abby, I'm going to do both.

But first of all,

thanks for keeping the almost 100% winning/slash losing streak jack for husbands who try to pass off laziness as some idea about how the world should work and

that taking care of the visual aspects of the car is an unnecessary expense.

Just say it, dude.

You're lazy.

You're lazy.

You're lazy and you're a slob because you're eating burritos in your car and you're staying in your car.

Gross.

Obviously, all of Abby's requests are reasonable and so ordered.

Wash the car four times a year.

Of course.

Whoever cleans the car gets to keep all the money.

Of course, Jack gets none of his pocket change back.

It's forfeited because he's being a slob.

Not only is he dropping burrito all over the place, but he can't even keep his coins in his pocket.

And yeah, don't eat burritos in the car.

A couple of reasons for this.

One, burritos are beautiful and deserve to be savored.

Right, Jesse?

Preach, preacher.

Yeah, thank you.

You don't want any distractions when you're eating a burrito.

Distractions

including driving a multiple hundreds of pounds killing machine

that you have to keep safely on the road without murdering your fellow citizens.

I don't know how much a car weighs.

That should be pretty obvious, right?

It's obviously more than a couple hundred pounds.

Yeah.

One ton or two tons.

Average car.

I'm going to say one ton.

And eating the car is something that we all do.

We probably shouldn't because it is a distraction.

But if you're going to mitigate that distraction, there are some foods that I think are safer to eat than others in a pinch.

And I think we've discussed this before, but just to go over it again, and Jesse, I would like to include your suggestions as well if you have any.

First of all, not acceptable, almost all sandwiches.

Too much stuff can fall out.

And definitely all hot dogs, which aren't sandwiches, but also have stuff that can fall out.

Right.

Falling out of stuff

is going to distract you because you're going to be like, oh no, I just bought these pants.

And then you're going to plow into a pole or another car.

So it needs needs to be a self-contained

thing that will not fall apart in your hand.

You need to be able to grab it easily, get it into your maw,

ideally in a single bite, and that's it.

One exception I might allow

is a well-made and well-chilled tuna sandwich because that's all paste.

It all sticks together.

It was really like, hmm, a dense tuna sandwich on white.

Yeah, I'll do that.

Just be careful not to leave that on the seat.

Yeah, you know, there are, you know, pros and cons to everything.

It's probably safer to drive with a tuna sandwich than, say, a floppy roast beef sandwich or a wrap of some kind, but you're going to stink up that car.

Everyone's going to be like, gross.

No egg salad because that's too floppy.

That'll flop out of there.

A bagel with cream cheese?

Fine.

Although, maybe a little too thick.

Depends on the size of the bagel.

Some of those bagels, you really have to uninjure your jaw to gnaw into that thing.

I would say a tea sandwich, here we go.

Any kind of tea sandwich is made with a savory paste.

Like if you're driving a car in Harrods, you're fine.

But mostly, self-contained snack foods.

Self-contained snack foods like potato chips or cheese puffs or jerkies and any kind of broth.

You can have like a bone broth.

That's probably the best thing to do.

A nourishing bone broth in a thermal carafe next to you.

That's how you drive safely until you can stop and have a proper meal and properly sit down and eat without killing other human beings.

Can I run a few things by you, Judge Hodgman?

Please.

So we've already ruled on any, you can drive a car through Herod's.

Yes.

What about Fortnum and Mason?

I wish I had said Fortnum and Mason because I prefer it.

You and I went there once with Jennifer Marmor, and that was so much fun.

I love that place.

What about the Ritz?

I've never been to the Ritz Hotel in London.

No, I've never been, so

I don't know the twists and turns in there.

It might be a wrong place to drive a car in.

What about Pret Homanger?

Oh, boy.

I mean, that's just a fast casual restaurant.

You know, I don't eat a lot of bread these days because

it's just easier for me to not.

And

yet, I really, I really have such a deep, deep fondness for British pre-made sandwiches in triangle plastic packages.

With Prédamanger being, as far as I'm concerned, the apex of that.

Like an egg and rocket sandwich from Prè de Manger,

forget it.

But I would never eat that in a car.

Okay, we have to eat some sandwiches, so we're going to take a quick break.

I'm so hungry.

When we come back, we'll clear the docket some more.

You know, we've been doing My Brother, My Brother, me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years, I know where this has ended up.

But no, no, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on My Brother, My Brother, and Me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So, how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined!

No, no, no, it's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Long.

I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket.

Here's something from Bonnie.

My husband, Connor, and I have been married for 10 years.

We recently had a baby, and we've never had photos taken by a professional.

Even our wedding was shot by a friend, and the pictures are terrible.

A former friend, I guess.

It's truly one of my biggest life regrets.

Connor says professional photos are unnecessarily expensive expensive and aren't guaranteed to be good.

He claims with a good camera, anyone can be a photographer.

I'd love to capture some great family moments that are practically

kinfolk magazine, I presume, worthy, without inconveniencing a friend.

I'd like to redo our wedding day, but time travel is a completely separate issue.

Well, it's interesting.

You know, I don't think Connor is exactly wrong.

We do have technology now, even

much better than 10 years ago, to take really, really, really fine photographs with little devices that we carry around in our pockies.

So he's not wrong on

you can name them, Swiss Army knives.

That's right.

Yeah.

At the very end of the little white toothpick that you pull out of the end is a very fine camera.

Oh.

When I discovered, it took, I had a Swiss Army knife for a long time as a kid before I realized I could pull out those little, two little hidden doodads.

One is a toothpick and the other is a little tiny tweezers.

I felt like I had discovered the Ark of the Covenant.

I was so excited.

So Connor's not necessarily wrong.

And I'll even give Connor another little bit of credit here: that I would say a professional photographer at your wedding is, I'm going to do the math, roughly 1,000 times more important than having professional photographs of your baby

because a baby is a smaller event.

You only have to kind of put the baby in front of the camera and take the picture.

And

as opposed to capture an entire day's worth

of incredibly emotional, important moments and a cast of, you know, fives or tens or even hundreds.

Like it's a much bigger job.

And it really does require a professional photographer's eye and experience doing that to get those moments.

And that's why you have that lifelong regret that Connor talked you out of having a professional photographer at your wedding and thus tainting the marriage on its very first day.

Well done, Connor.

Also, family photographs.

I've sat for a couple of professional family photographs

and they can feel posed and weird and uncomfortable.

But that said, There is nothing wrong with hiring at all.

Even though you can probably get some pretty good pictures of your baby, and believe me, now that you both have cameras in your pockies,

you're going to have so many great pictures of your baby, and so many medium pictures of your baby, and so many bad pictures of your baby, and you will never delete any of them.

They're just going to take up terabytes of space in your life for the rest of your life.

You're not going to lack for nice pictures of this baby.

But there is no question that there's nothing wrong with getting a professional photograph.

They are not unnecessarily expensive, especially since Connor is not done paying for the crime he perpetrated on your wedding day.

He owes you.

Hire that professional photographer.

Get some of those sweet, sweet posed shots,

if only to restore balance in this marriage, and then you can move on with your lives.

Another possibility: if he really is against hiring a professional photographer, do it behind his back.

Hire a PI to like stake out your house and take pictures of your baby as you're walking by.

This is a sound of gabble.

Hey, Judge Hodgman.

Yeah.

Can I offer a recommendation?

Yeah, you can.

If anyone needs professional portrait or event photography in Southern California, why not holler at hodgman at maximumfund.org and we'll hook you up with Shane Pangburn, who is the husband of our brilliant producer, Jennifer Marmor.

Shane Pangburn?

I'd love to have him photograph my baby.

What baby wouldn't smile at Shane?

The guy's a peach.

Okay, that's it for another Judge John Hodgman.

The show is produced by Jennifer Marmer.

You can follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We're on Instagram at JudgeJohnHodgman.

Make sure to hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJ H.

O.

And you can talk about Judge John Hodgman on our Facebook page in the Maximum Fund Facebook group and on the MaxFund subreddit at maximumfund.reddit.com.

Submit your cases at maximumfund.org slash jjho or email Hodgman at maximumfund.org.

We'll see you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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